Switzerland has frozen assets held in the country by Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and associates, the Swiss government said on Monday, following his arrest by U.S. forces in Caracas and transfer to the United States.
A spokesperson for the Swiss Foreign Ministry said the order affects 37 people. The spokesperson said the ministry could not provide any details on the value of the assets in question.
By doing it after Maduro’s kidnapping—rather than before, independently of US foreign policy—Switzerland is tacitly accepting the right of the U.S. to interfere in Venezuelan politics, a matter in which no U.S. court has jurisdiction. I don’t like Maduro any more than the next dictator, but the U.S. shouldn’t have illegally kidnapped him and murdered dozens of Cubans and Venezuelans in the process, and countries like the UK and Switzerland shouldn’t be normalizing this violation of international law by any means.